What Do You Mean (Cover) - Feedback Wanted

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D-toks

New member
Hi,

I've just posted a cover of Justin Bieber's song "What Do You Mean". I produced it myself and was wondering if anyone would be will to give me feedback on how it sounds? I did manual doubling for a lot of the track (i.e. blended two original takes together instead of doubling through use of plug ins) just to try it out. Also used tape delay and not sure if it is really coming through well since it was my first time trying to use it. Finally, I'm not sure if the volume of my vocals or the mix overall is too loud? I decided not to use a compressor this time in favour of using Logic's automation feature to manually adjust volumes for each track separately in the mix (very tedious; probably will not do this again). However I'm not sure if the mix is consistent volume wise. Please let me know what you think regarding my concerns and as always, any additional feedback as help is appreciated! Take care.

 
Dtoks man these vocals are really good, you've been practicing. . .

Nothing to complain about here, I never heard the original but this is a good mix (a backing track I'm guessing?)
 
Thank Eas,

Yes it's a backing track instrumental for the original song actually. Hard to get lucky like that but it is a pretty popular song so I guess it is less difficult to find free and complete instrumentals for those.

I have been practicing and working on the things we've discussed in our own conversations so thanks for the support. Hopefully I can pay forward what you, Broken H, and a few others have done for me to some of the other newer members coming up. I still get frustrated with my sound from time to time but I'm beginning to feel more gratification on top of the fun for what I'm doing now thanks to you guys.
 
It's good mix and performance. I thought the master was too compressed and gave the song a harshness and congestion in the midrange. For me, more dynamics and a more natural open sound works, but I guess that's not what you're aiming for.

I'm not the right person to advise you on this genre. To give you an idea how isolated I am from contemporary pop, I'd never heard the song and didn't know who the original was by until my wife called up from downstairs, "are you listening to Justin Beiber...?"
 
Robus said:
It's good mix and performance. I thought the master was too compressed and gave the song a harshness and congestion in the midrange. For me, more dynamics and a more natural open sound works, but I guess that's not what you're aiming for.

I'm not the right person to advise you on this genre. To give you an idea how isolated I am from contemporary pop, I'd never heard the song and didn't know who the original was by until my wife called up from downstairs, "are you listening to Justin Beiber...?"
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Thanks but haha the last line was too funny. I can't even decide whether to take what your wife said as a good or bad thing and if you know, please don't inform me so I can continue to have fun with this in my mind.

Onto the more technical aspects of your post. I don't have the ear to detect things like what you've mentioned yet. I'm still green and need to get a better ear for hearing harshness. That said, I do really want to learn how to get rid of the congested "sounds like this person is recording in a cardboard box" sound. I've toiled, okay...maybe that's an exaggeration, but I definitely have tried quite hard to figure out how to EQ and compress in a way that gives an open sound. Do you have any tips? It probably starts with my bad room acoustics but if you have any advice regardless, I'm very open to hearing it!

Also yes, I do know that I also have to take mastering more seriously. After mixing I typically throw on a preset multi-pressor as my master which probably isn't doing me any favours but mastering seems like it can take an excessively long time if music is not one's job! Mixing on its own is already making it difficult for me to keep up.

Thanks.
 
I'm new to this too. I seem to be able to hear problems quite well. Fixing them is a different matter. He's how I would approach it. Get rid of the mastering and go back to your mix. Listen until you hear the problem. Then start muting tracks until it goes away. Now you know which tracks are problematic. It could also be the interaction of more than one track. Once you've found the tracks that are causing the problem, mute any plugins on those tracks. If it gets better, then you've caused the problem with inappropriate plugins or settings. Fix those. If you still hear it with the plugins muted, then it's in the raw tracks. Set up an EQ plugin as an insert in the tracks, one at a time. Boost the gain on the EQ all the way, then sweep through the frequencies until you find the ones responsible. Try applying a cut to those frequencies. Listen again. Unmute tracks one at a time and listen for an improvement in the overall mix. Repeat as necessary.

Troubleshooting, in other words. I've been doing this on my songs. I feel my mixes are improving--still not great. Oh, something else I've learned. Room ambiance will sometimes give the vocals that boxy character. If that's what's happening, try moving the mic around or record in a different location if possible.
 
Thanks. That is quite an extensive process haha. How long on average does it take for you to mix one of your songs? I did this mix/master in about 4-5 hours and I know I probably could have benefited from more time.

I like your idea of stripping things down along the way to make sure I'm not creating my own problems rather than solving them with certain plug-ins. Also yes, doubling probably does leave a lot of room for issues in terms of interactions b/w raw tracks.
 
It doesn't take me hours. I try to keep a rough mix going as I'm tracking. I add FX like compression and EQ to tracks as they get recorded, with level and pan set like I'd want in the final mix. I also set up a reverb bus.

The thing I like about this workflow is that you're tweaking the mix continually as you record. Once all the elements are in place, the mix is usually pretty close. You can focus on fine tuning. Also like it because I lack the patience for long mixing sessions.
 
awesome vocals. i'm liking the talent i'm hearing here lately. all these criticisms and critiques are paying off for people. not a fan of the clock sound - i think the song would be very intimate without it in those sections. is that in the originals? these are your vocals? if so, what vocal mic do you have. nice stuff dude

edit: hey, i would clean up the ending. the very end. just a smoother stop and finish. i can try to explain further if you aren't sure what i'm saying.
 
Robus said:
It doesn't take me hours. I try to keep a rough mix going as I'm tracking. I add FX like compression and EQ to tracks as they get recorded, with level and pan set like I'd want in the final mix. I also set up a reverb bus.

The thing I like about this workflow is that you're tweaking the mix continually as you record. Once all the elements are in place, the mix is usually pretty close. You can focus on fine tuning. Also like it because I lack the patience for long mixing sessions.
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So you don't really see value in the whole mix everything as a whole ideology and prefer to mix things in isolation? I'm still divided because I always hear mixing as you go or mixing certain parts in isolation rather than in the context of the whole mix may prevent the entire mix from sounding ideal but maybe I'm too far on the other extreme of not doing any mixing whatsoever until all takes are done and such...which makes things a mission and a half that I inevitably start rushing in the end.

andrushkiwt said:
awesome vocals. i'm liking the talent i'm hearing here lately. all these criticisms and critiques are paying off for people. not a fan of the clock sound - i think the song would be very intimate without it in those sections. is that in the originals? these are your vocals? if so, what vocal mic do you have. nice stuff dude

edit: hey, i would clean up the ending. the very end. just a smoother stop and finish. i can try to explain further if you aren't sure what i'm saying.
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Thanks for the compliment on the vocals. It has not been easy. I credit most of my progress to actually trying to apply a lot of what I've been told to work on by folks here as you've alluded to :). The soundcloud post are my vocals and I use an audio technica at2020 XLR mic (~$115-130 range, with the USB version being $150ish but I hear XLR is better anyway). Also the clock sound actually is in the original so I couldn't do anything about that! Here is the original if you're curious. If you could explain further what you mean by the smoothing I would really appreciate it!



easlern said:
You guys mix in hours? Man it takes me days. Latest one has been a month-long epic I think lol
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That's what I'm saying though. I feel mixing merely for hours may be resulting in me producing lower quality mixes. I'm trying to upload something, be it a vocal or a beat to soundcloud at least once a week so maybe I'm rushing the process a bit too much in my attempt to remain consistent in my uploads. Mixing probably should take longer than just hours.
 
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